Climbable

The Challenge

The President of a marketing agency wanted a way to motivate and cross-train his employees, improving themselves, learning skills, and becoming more adept at the processes of the agency. Having a mostly millennial personnel, he knew that the key was to gamify the process. Being in charge of a marketing agency, he wanted it to look good too.

Discovery & Research

User Persona - Matt Keeley

• Age: Mid-twenties

• Education: Associate’s Degree

• Status: Single

• Occupation: Marketer

• Location: Las Vegas

• Tech Literacy: High

Bio

Matt’s a creative strategist and account coordinator with only months of experience under his belt, but he’s driven, hungry to learn, and doesn’t know where to start. He’s passionate about his work, personable to his clients, and wants to find moments between his calls and meetings to take the time and improve himself.

Core Needs

• A clear learning path with clear results

• Short-term, achievable goals

• A rewards system for dopamine and motivation

Frustrations

• Wants to improve skillset, but doesn’t know where to start

• Only has limited pockets of time to learn between busy life schedule

• Long-term learning doesn’t have measurable ways to show progress

Empathy Map

User Does

• Writes down goals

• Watches video tutorials

• Listens to self-improvement podcasts

• Reads entrepreneurial books and articles

User Thinks

• There’s so much to learn, where do I start?

• I don’t have enough time to focus

User Feels

• Bored

• Frustrated

• Hopeful

• Excited

User Says

• “I wish I knew what I didn’t know.”

• “Do I really need to know all this to level up?“

• ”I wish these lectures weren’t so boring.”

Information Architecture

Actions

• Action name

• Classification

  • Personal improvement

  • Client Relations

  • Networking

  • Culture

  • Featured

• Points go towards earning badges

• Estimated time for completion

Journeys

• Allocated tasks for specific journeys

• Different journeys for different user groups (design, sales, leadership, networking, etc.)

• Show points going towards various aspects of the user

Badges

• Earned after allocating specific points in specific journeys

• Categorized by journey

• Milestones mark the completion of various achievements

Users & User Groups

• Allows tracking of individual and team journeys

• Multiple departments and multiple action types can be set up

Branding, Visuals, and UI

The interface used a minimal white-and-black palette, leveraging negative space to create a clean, open atmosphere, like a clear sky, uncluttered and expansive. A bold red accent was used selectively to draw attention and improve visibility where it mattered most.

Rounded edges and subtle shadows softened the experience, making the data-rich environment feel more human and approachable. Visual design focused heavily on clarity, momentum, and a sense of measurable progress through stats and graphs.

Branding Notes:

• Minimal, bold, and liberating

• Clear, legible, and high-impact

• A focused command-center aesthetic with a restrained UI presence

Prototyping

High Fidelity Prototype

For this project, we hit the ground running. The desire was to create a clean dashboard, let the data be easily accessible, understandable, and easy to navigate.

See the Figma File

See the Figma Prototype

Final Thoughts

The gamified learning dashboard successfully addressed the client’s challenge: motivating employees to develop new skills and engage with internal processes. By blending clean visuals, intuitive navigation, and a structured reward system, the platform turned self-improvement into a focused, trackable experience. Early feedback from users like Matt highlighted the value of short-term goals, visible progress, and a sense of accomplishment! Exactly the outcomes the client was aiming for. The result was a tool that didn’t just look good, but drove real growth across teams.